At 2:06 AM 9/17/96, The Deviant wrote:

Not to mention, the basic flaw of OTP.. if you have the only copy of the key, and the key is non-repetitive, how do you send the key to another person without being just as insecure as not encrypting it in the first place... almost any OTP claims are gonna be snake oil.

Not quite. Many cryptographic messages have a *time value*. The canonical example is "Attack at dawn." A one-time pad carried by a unit out onto the battlefield is eminently valuable for receiving such time-critical messages. Many other examples abound: embassies receiving instructions from the home country, travelling businessmen exchanging messages with the office, Air Force One receiving encrypted transmissions from NORAD, and so on. This is why OTPs are still in use by the military, embassies, etc. Granted, asymmetric key systems have various advantages, discussed here all the time, but to say almost any OTP claims are snake oil is untrue. (Many claims about OTPs _are_ of course snake oil, but usually in that they are not true OTPs in the Shannon sense.) --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."